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Travelling Through Caste International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Volume 4 Issue 6 Pilgrimages in India: Celebrating Article 11 journeys of plurality and sacredness 2016 Travelling Through Caste Raj Kumar Delhi University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp Part of the Tourism and Travel Commons Recommended Citation Kumar, Raj (2016) "Travelling Through Caste," International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage: Vol. 4: Iss. 6, Article 11. doi:https://doi.org/10.21427/D7D70B Available at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp/vol4/iss6/11 Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. © International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage ISSN : 2009-7379 Available at: http://arrow.dit.ie/ijrtp/ Volume 4(vi) 2016 Travelling Through Caste Raj Kumar Delhi University [email protected] With its peculiar caste system, India is considered the most stratified of all known societies in human history. This system is ‘peculiar’ as it divides human beings into higher and lower castes and this division is backed by certain religious sanctions based on the sociological concepts of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’. While the higher caste is associated with ‘purity’, the lower caste is associated with ‘pollution’. The people of the lower castes are not allowed to undertake religious journeys and yet are expected to enable the pilgrimages of the higher castes by playing the role of laborers. Radical Bhakti saint-poets like Kabir, Chokamela, Tukaram and Ravidas, among others, pointed out the futility of undertaking pilgrimages. Instead of purifying the body so that the soul can go to heaven, they urged people to listen to their inner self and build an inclusive society based on equality and social justice. My paper focuses on Indian pilgrimages as seen through the lens of caste narratives. I address the relationship between caste and religion, with a specific focus on the roles undertaken by the lower castes when the higher castes undertake pilgrimages. I raise the question of the possibility of studying the idea of pilgrimage without caste references. Key Words: caste system, religion, pilgrimage, social justice, Hinduism and caste practices, Dalits Introduction equals anything suffered by her people when the British were here; she has been capable of Geoffrey Moorhouse, a Fellow of the Royal Society of unparalleled generosity to her last imperial Literature, London, in one of his travel books entitled, rulers, but she bickers endlessly and meanly Om: An Indian Pilgrimage (1994:15), describes India’s with her closest neighbor and twin; she gave birth to the creed of massive non-violent protest many contradictions in the following manner: and once practiced this effectively, yet in the No other country has lived with so complicated first generation of independence she has a past so equably, assimilating everything that assassinated three of her own leaders, starting has happened to it, obliterating naught, so that with the begetter of satyagraha … not even the intricate histories of European states have produced such a rich pattern as that Such contradictions and anomalies run through India bequeathed by the Mauryas, the Ashokas, the from end to end and this quote aptly captures the Pahlavas, the Guptas, the Chalukyas, the milieu of the country. At the heart of India’s Hoysalas, the Pandyas, the Cholas, the conundrum is religion and it too, flourishes here as Mughals and the British - to identify only a few nowhere else. Other countries may have surrendered of the peoples who have shaped India’s themselves to a particular religion, but in India the inheritance. Nor is there another land that constantly provokes in the stranger such elation various faiths are deeply entrenched and acknowledged and despair, so much affection and anger, by passionately. Virtually everyone practices some form powerful contrasts and irreducible opposites of of devotion. An Indian without a spiritual dimension to behavior: wickedness and virtue, caring and his or her life is exceedingly rare. As Moorhouse adds: indifference, things bewitching and disgusting and terrifying and disarming, often in quick By this means the wretched can entertain the succession. India has nuclear power and other possibility of improvement, and are sustained in advanced technology close by some of the most their wretchedness until something better comes obscene slums in creation; she has never failed their way in another form, or until they are to hold democratic elections at the appointed even more blessedly released from the cycle of time, yet these too frequently elevate men whose life and death. The comfortable find in it a own votes can be bought with rupees and other justification of their prosperity and an emoluments; she has a high and mighty self- assurance that their submission will continue to esteem and a taste for moral posturing which bring them rewards. The most truly spiritual ~ 67 ~ Kumar Travelling Through Caste merely hope that with perseverance they will rules and regulations prescribed in the Dharma one day achieve enlightenment. Incomparable Shastras which are also called Smritis. Dharma and inimitable she is; but in this as in much (ethics / religion) and karma (action), paap (sin) and else, India is also our great paradigm punya (virtue), hell and heaven are some of its (Moorhouse, 1994:15-16). dominant ideologies. Hinduism in practice is full of binaries: believers versus non-believers, tradition That ‘great paradigm’ called India has several other versus modernity, sagun (ultimate being with contradictions which Moorhouse does not record, the attributes) versus nirgun (ultimate being without most important being the caste system. India is attributes), men versus women, upper caste versus considered the most stratified of all known societies. It lower caste, and so on. With these dualities it seems harbours one of the greatest separating forces to divide difficult to define what constitutes the core value in human beings into either higher or lower castes. This Hinduism. This is what Kireet Joshi writes in his book, peculiar division is backed by certain religious The Veda and Indian Culture, sanctions, based on the sociological concepts of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’. These sanctions help the caste It is impossible to describe Indian spirituality system to renew its legitimacy even after it is and religion by any exclusive label. Even in its challenged. As a result, the caste system, with its advanced forms it cannot be described as myriad variations of superordination and monotheism or monism or pantheism or subordination, with confusions and contradictions, rites nihilism or transcend(en)talism, although each and rituals, vices and virtues, dogmas and doubts, one of these is present in some subtle or professions and protests, is able to persist in all regions pronounced way. Even the spiritual truths behind the primitive forms such as those of of India with different degrees of rigidity. animism, spiritism, fetishism and totemism have been allowed to play a role in its complex The focus of this paper is Indian pilgrimages as seen totality, although their external forms have through the lens of caste narratives. Drawing upon been discouraged and are not valid or multiple sources, I study the interrelationship between applicable to those who lead an inner mental pilgrimage and caste and I raise the following and spiritual life . (Joshi, 1991:57). questions: How do we understand caste while reading the literature of pilgrimage? Since caste devalues Hinduism and Caste Practices labour, what specific roles do the lower castes play when the higher castes undertake pilgrimages? What Since Hinduism meticulously follows the principle of are the relationships between caste and religion? Is purity and pollution, it is the upper caste men who there any way we can study pilgrimage without making always have privilege over the lower castes, Dalits and reference to caste? These and other questions will be women in day-to-day religious practice. The Hindus raised while attempting an understanding of the politics may deny it but that is a fact. And the history of it, of of travelling through caste. course, goes back to 200 BC when Manu codified all the inhumane and unethical laws against the Shudras Pilgrimage and Hinduism: An Introduction and Atishudras in the name of religion. His work was later known as the Manushastra or Manusmriti. It is Before beginning to discuss Indian pilgrimage and with the Manusmriti that the full elaboration of the caste, let us address the idea of pilgrimage itself. Why caste hierarchy can be seen. This was the beginning of do people undertake pilgrimage? Pilgrimage is Brahmanism. During this time Brahmans were given primarily a religious act and religious communities the highest status in society and caste divisions were across the world undertake this practice. In the Hindu enforced by the kings. The role of the king was seen to tradition, we hear of kings and queens as early as the be in protecting dharma, now interpreted as time of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata going to varnashrama dharma or the law of the castes (and religious places as pilgrims. ashrama or stages of life). To keep the upper caste interests intact, varnashrama dharma was often Since the focus of my paper is the inter-relationship supported, propagated and reinterpreted through the between caste and pilgrimage, let me briefly discuss Upanishads, Sutras, Smritis, and Puranas, which are some of the dominant traditions of Hinduism. We must today known in combination as the Dharma Shastra. have heard umpteen times that Hinduism is not a religion; it is a way of life. And since it is a way of life, Thus, through the centuries, the Dharma Shastra of the the everyday life of the Hindu is strictly governed by Hindus imposed a series of social, political, economic ~ 68 ~ International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Volume 4(vi) 2016 and religious restrictions on the lower castes, making whose sole purpose of existence was to serve the the ‘untouchables’ completely dependent on those interests of the upper castes.
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